Home › In Egypt and the East › In Egypt and the East: Virgil

In Egypt and the East: Virgil

Virgil refers the story of the generation of bees from the body of the sacrificial bull to Egypt. This story is very wide-spread and no doubt is symbolical of the resurrection of the soul after the death of the body. In his fourth "Georgic," Virgil thus describes the generation of bees from the dead animal: - "But if the whole stock should suddenly fail any one, and he should have no means to recover a new breed, it is time both to unfold the memorable invention of the Arcadian master, and how the tainted gore of bullocks slain has often produced bees. I will disclose the whole tradition, tracing it high from its first source; for where the happy nation of Pellæan Canopus inhabit the banks of the Nile, floating the plains with his overflowing river, and sail around their fields in painted gondolas, and where the river, that rolls down as far as from the swarthy Indians, presses on the borders of quivered Persia, and fertiles verdant Egypt with black silt, and pouring along divides itself into seven different mouths, all the country grounds infallible relief on this art. First, a space of ground of small dimensions, and contracted for this purpose, is chosen ; this they strengthen with the tiling of a narrow roof and confined walls, and add four windows of slanting light in the direction of the four winds. Then a bullock, just bending the horns in his forehead, two years old, is sought out ; whilst he struggles exceedingly they close up both his nostrils and the breath of his mouth; and when they have beaten him to death, his battered entrails are crushed within the hide, that remains entire. When dead they leave him pent up, and lay under his sides fragments of boughs, thyme, and fresh cassia. This is done when first the zephyrs stir the waves, before the meadows blush with new colors, before the chattering swallow suspends her nest upon the rafters. Meanwhile the juices, warmed in the tender veins, ferment; and animals, wonderful to behold, first short of their feet, and in a little while buzzing with wings, swarm together, and more and more take to the thin air, till they burst away like a shower poured from summer clouds, or like an arrow from the whizzing string, when the swift Parthians first begin the fight."

It has been suggested, in explanation of the wide-spread belief that bees were generated in dead bodies, that flies were confounded with bees by the ancient naturalists, who therefore believed that bees, like flies, were born from carrion. The old name given in England to the bee, the honey fly, gives force to the suggestion, as also the fact that the North American Indians called the honey bee thẻ white man's fly - showing how generally the two insects have been confused with each other.

In Egypt and the East We search Egypt in vain for the graceful and sensuous imagery of the Hindus. There are Egyptian love-songs, but the voice of the bee is not in them. Varro's "birds" were not the beloved companions of rural scenes, and if they wove their dark lines across the face of the lotus in Egypt, we are not informed of it. The nearest we come to an appreciation of the bee in Egyptian poetry is in the following: - "On the festival day of the garden, that is, on the day when the garden was in full bloom, the wild fig-tree calls the maiden to come into the shade of the fig-leaves as a trysting-place. "The little sycamore 1 Which she planted with her hand, She begins to speak, And her words are as drops of honey."

We know that honey was valued in sacrificial rites.

From the great papyrus of Rameses III., in which he gives full details of all he had done for the temples of his country during his reign of thirty-one years, we learn that the following payments of sacrificial funds were made from the royal treasury : - 331,702 jars of incense, honey, and oil. 3,100 uten of wax. 1,933,766 jars of incense, honey, fat, oil, etc.